First Grade, Science, Set Three

Here is the list of resources we used for learning about the Rain Forest:

• About The Rain Forest by Heather Johanasen and Sindy McKay -- this is from the "We Both Read" series. The page on the left had a picture and text for me to read, the page on the right had a picture and text for K. to read. Each day K. picked one animal we read about to add to her notebook (okay, a couple days she added two animals because she couldn't decide between them).
• Rain Forest by Ting Morris -- this book has things to make, activities, and facts.
• We planted a pineapple top (we have tried this before and it has never worked, but there were more instructions, so I'm hopeful.)
• A jaguar disguise is in process
• Rain, Rain, Rain Forest by Brenda Guiberson -- we took two days to read this book. It has a lot of onomatopoeia in it. It is written as a story, but gives a lot of good information. The full page illustrations are cut-paper collage but are very realistic.
• At Home in the Rain Forest by Diane Willow -- this book also has great illustrations. Three-fourths of each 2-page spread is illustration. On the other fourth, there is text and three to six small pictures of things to find in the large illustration.
• Rain Forest by Fiona Macdonald -- this book has experiments, music, facts, crafts, games, etc.
• Nature's Green Umbrella by Gail Gibbons -- by the time we got to this book, most of the text was review, so we mostly looked at the pictures, which really helped with our mural.
• Exploring Environments: At Home in the Rainforest -- this is a video, just 15 minutes long, with a woman walking through a rainforest showing animals and plants
• While looking for a Rain Forest Food Chain, I found the website Animals of a Tropical Rainforest where you can put animals in a picture of a rain forest and print it out. There is also a link to an activity and a link to create a tropical rain forest web (which doesn't work with my browser)
• Really Wild Animals: Totally Tropical Rain Forest by National Geographic -- (this is a dvd) K. really enjoyed watching this movie and it showed a lot of animals and gave good information

Rain Forest Mural

• First we painted the tree trunks and branches of the four levels of the forest: forest floor, understory, canopy, and emergents. Those are rain clouds across the top of the mural.

• Then we added by leaves (we used sponges).

• Now we have added some animals, doing our best to put them in the correct layer of the forest. Some books had conflicting information (one had the sloth in the understory and another put it in the canopy) so just do your best! I got the animals by searching "coloring pages rain forest animals" on the internet. Then I shrunk them to an appropriate size. We used the pictures and illustrations in our books to color them correctly.

Here are some fun books we read about the Rain Forest:

• The Parrot Tico Tango by Anna White
• Way Up High in a Tall Green Tree by Jan Peck
• The Frog with the Big Mouth retold by Teresa Bateman
• Lake of the Big Snake by Isaac Olaleye
• The Umbrella by Jan Brett

This week we learned about the Boreal Forest:

• A Walk in the Boreal Forest by Rebecca L. Johnson -- there is so much information in the short book, take a few days to read through it. We made a list on one side of a paper of animals that are herbivores, and a list on the other side of predators (carnivores)
• One Small Place in a Tree by Barbara Brenner -- this book takes you through the life of a hole in a tree. The illustrations are beautiful and there isn't too much text

Here are a couple books about other forests:

• Temperate Forest Mammals by Elaine Landau
• A Forest's Live: From Meadow to Mature Woodland by Cathy and Robert Mania -- we read some of this book, but mostly we looked at the pictures